Rain got up and pulled his black belt around his waist. He was glad his tactic worked out well. However, the blood stain on his feet told him some sacrifices were made.

"Faking my death really is effective. Now, where did that punk say he's going again?"

He ruffled his hair and dashed out of the gym, heart thumping against his chest.

"Ferro. Damn it! Shouldn't have left him alone."

He saw a flock of Murkrow fly past and bolted down three flights of stairs. The smell of ashes pricked his nostrils and he hastened to the girls' dormitory.

My cousin! She must be in danger. He skidded past the cream pillars and paused for a second. Wait... She already turned herself into a spirit.

Shaking his head, the bald student inched closer to the place. A crash resounded again.

"Ferro!" His eyes enlarged at the sight of two barrelling boys, one alive, one dead. A bloodied dagger clanked.

"I'm fine." Ferro pushed the dead body off him and grimaced in an attempt to sit up. The corpse was crisp, the fabric full of holes.

"You're not." Rain took the cyclist's arm and counted the number of cuts. Six small cuts. "We have to get you to Jade. She can heal you with her Singularity, I'm sure."

"You can be as annoying as me, but you really can show concern." Ferro sighed.

"Get on my back. I'll piggyback you up to her room." The third-year bent his knees a little and angled his back. The brown-haired boy clawed at his shoulders and got onto him after a little struggle. "You're lighter than I thought."

"I'll be twice as heavy if I activate my power."

"Don't remind me." The student's shoulders heaved as he went up the stairs.

The boy on his back leant on his shoulder and produced a grin. He felt his pocket and found both his weapons still there. "Thanks."

「」

By the time Clay reached the area, he could only find Nigel's corpse.

"It's okay. He's alive. Ferro's alive." Clay let out a long sigh.

The white doll pecked his forehead and Ria appeared behind him.

"Seems like he didn't need your help."

"But there are traces of fire. Where did he get matches?"

"I don't think so." Ria crossed his arms. "There aren't any burn marks. This is not some ordinary fire."

"Will-o-wisp, Supernatural-san?" Clay deadpanned. "Or, Titan."

"No. You're right that it's probably something supernatural." Ria frowned and lowered her head. "Did you just call me Supernatural-san?"

Clay nodded. "Feels like Nigel planned to do this amidst the chaos."

Ria dipped her head. Something's not right. She picked up Nigel's phone which seemed undamaged. Pressing the button at the side, the screen lit up to reveal a collage full of Clay's nude photos as the wallpaper. She arched a brow and turned the phone down, her cheeks reddening. Glancing at the boy beside her, her heart skipped a beat.

"What's your favourite number?" Ria asked and clutched the phone. Wait, does it mean that when I am visible, I can touch things?

"5354."

She punched the combination into the keypad and the screen displayed a page full of apps. Gasping, she browsed through the list of contacts and found Clay's name. The word "sweetheart" was beside it. She exited the app and scrolled through the messages. She didn't care if it was an invasion of privacy. It served Nigel right.

One chat caught her attention.

Yvette: kill Ferro and Clay is yours.

"Do you know an Yvette?" Ria's probing eyes landed on the boy.

"No. Why?" Clay took the phone and narrowed his gaze. He needed to know who was out to get his brother. Jabbing the call button, he waited. No one took the call.

Trying again, it came through.

"Hello?"

Clay froze.

"Hello?" The slightly shrill voice came again, sweet as honey.

He squeezed his balls. No freaking way.

"Annyeonghaseyo? Anyone there?" The sing-song voice held no hostility yet it made him shudder. No, he couldn't even be sure if it was the unique, foreign language that stunned him.

"Who was it?" Ria whispered.

The line died.

With chattering teeth, the boy's head shivered, his body temperature dropping. His eyes didn't make it to the 180 degrees clockwise he hoped they would make.

"A Chatot. It's a killer Chatot."

「」

The avian's pink beak whacked at the wooden bed frame. A girl held it down and stroked its feathers. It plumed itself and stayed perched on her extended finger, then squawked twice.

"No jaem, Chatter!" She grabbed the phone and placed it at her ear to hear the continuous 'tut-tut' sound from the device.

A head popped out from the bathroom, a toothbrush stuck in a foaming mouth, emerald eyes looking her way.

"Gwat?" Then came the sound of running water and gurgling. Then silence.

Amity emerged from the bathroom and sauntered over to the girl. "I mean, what?"

"The person hung up. It's an unknown number. Why'd have this phone? Did Yuzu give you this as a gift? She accepted it? Where're you going?"

"Whoa! Ji-min, chill. I'm going to meet her, duh." Amity straightened the girl's back and sniffed her black hair that rolled down the shoulders. "Also, Yuzucchi lost the charger for her phone so she thought she'd get me to charge it for her since we use the same brand."

"Dae-bak! This is her proclamation of trust and love!" Blue eyes surveyed a pinkish face for signs of shyness. "Oolala! Amity, you go girl! Getting bolder."

I sure am. Bold is my nature, after all. Amity brushed it off with a hand and scooted over to the door when she heard knocks intrude into their conversation.

Twirling around, she checked her reflection in the tall mirror, adjusting her skirt. Her just-polished nails now shone under the light, a lemon with a blue background full of fluffy, magnolia clouds. Spinning to the door, she pushed the handle down and flashed her prettiest smile.

"Yes? We hitting the pub?" The sixteen year-old dragged her words. A cough snapped her back to reality. Pushing her face into her palms, she muttered to herself, "Kill me please. This is so embarrassing."

"Hi." Mei waved at her and her roommate.

"What? I'm going to meet Yuzu. I have something to do, yes?"

"Ferro almost died, and you're going on a date. Are your raging lesbian hormones more important than a life? How can you act like nothing's happened?" A deeper voice said as a figure with a bandaged left arm appeared before Amity.

"You don't understand! I have other int— I didn't act like—"

"Says the carefree girl heavy with makeup," Mei said as she ran a finger across Amity's cheeks before scratching her chin and pouting. "Do you need a more passionate shade of red for your lipstick? It's not glossy enough. Do you think this much dolling-up can impress her?"

"What can I do better? I wanna look good so I can get closer to Yuzu." Amity inhaled sharply. She never thought Mei would specially come over to be a critic of her appearances. Maybe this girl knew more about dating than she. Just maybe. After all, Amity had never been a master at cosmetics and altering her appearance—neither then nor now.

"It's simple, really. Let's go to the bathroom for a little tweaking." Mei pushed the girl back into her room and closed the bathroom door after they entered. She winked at Sage and hoped that it would all go as planned.

The boy nodded and turned to Ji-min. "Thanks for making the effort to calm the student body down every day." He glazed over the room, crossed his arms, tightened his fists and sighed. His eyes landed on a video camera charging at the corner of the room, the lens staring at him.

"Oh, that's Amity's. She needs it for a project." Ji-min held it in her hands and clicked a button to show him some of the videos Amity had taken. Images, frame after frame, moved in his brown eyes. She paused at a video. "This one circulated online." She went on to the next one, then five more. "Am I boring you? Sorry. It's just, I don't talk to many boys except for Iseul."

"It's okay." Sage shifted his gaze to his phone. It was a message.

Zayn: Have you checked on Dynamite?

Sage: why?

"It's been a crazy year. Two of us are dead. I'm... kkamjjag nollan! Amity filmed a lot of us over the days by the way," Ji-min said. She took a sip of water from her bottle before looking at Sage again. He glanced up from his phone, eyes on the video camera. "This is a cursed year." Seeing that he didn't respond, she mumbled, "I'll be silent."

"I know," Sage said. "It's fine."

Zayn: Yuzu sent me the bad news! They died from food poisoning and Iseul, who was with them, was safe somehow. He's being nursed by Jade at the moment. Yuzu suspects Iseul might have done it.

Sage turned around to see the girl biting her fingernails after checking her phone. "Sage, I have to go see my brother. You stay here on your own."

As her shadow diminished along the corridor, Sage plopped himself down on the king-sized bed. He scrolled through the videos once again. Nothing pleased him. He rolled on the bed and his eyes, directed at the ceiling with a huge spiderweb crack in its centre, widened. Something shifted in the crack. It seemed alive, yet he knew it wasn't.

A Rattata? No, not that. It didn't look at all toxic purple. He narrowed his gaze.

A CCTV. But what's a surveillance camera doing here? Is there one in every room? Last year, there was a renovation of the dorms. Maybe they installed those cameras then. He blinked upon realising the device was shut down.

His palms grew cold when he sensed another shadow beneath the bed. He could make out various shapes and sizes. Doubling over, he glanced down into the moist blackness to see well-camouflaged objects reeking of powder.

Seems like there's more than meets the eye. He leapt off the bed and lay on the floor, blinking as he identified the objects. A pistol and many bullets. Twenty.

His breathing stilled. Sage crept to the wardrobe and slid the door to the left. Beneath long gowns and dresses was a grey safe with the need of a password. Strangely, it was left unlocked.

What's she hiding? Does Ji-min know?

Pulling the door open gingerly, he saw a familiar photograph of a boy whose bright hair shone like the sun.

"Zayn." Sage turned to the bathroom. All seemed way too quiet. No chattering, no footsteps, nothing. Chatter the Chatot had followed zir owner to find her brother. Still, this silence was unacceptable.

He drew his attention back to the safe where a certificate lay. It seemed like Amity's analytical skills helped her to clinch this debating trophy. She wasn't good at speaking so it could only be that. The base of the golden item was on a pile of papers about Kalosian History. Sage didn't get it. It was the same ten pages he saw, and even the fine print was there.

Maybe she knows something.

He closed the safe, twisted his body and strode over to the locked door to give it a hard knock. The door to the bathroom creaked open and an Amity who looked the same with the exception of darker, glossier red lips greeted him. Mei's back faced him, the girl unmoving, slender, pale pink lines having slashed her neck.

"What exactly happened in there?" Sage said.

"She's just unconscious." Amity shoved him out of her path and smirked. "My Trace ability told me she's got an ulterior motive for helping me. Know what that means?"

"No." Sage frowned. "You sound... different."

"You should know better than to mess with one of the most intelligent girls in Kalos. Now, it's payback time."

"What? I don't get it." Sage found himself distracted by a sudden negative thought telling him to just die already. It sucked to have such a Singularity.

"Her red eyes... It made me remember even more things before Noryuku. I have a sadist to deal with so I gotta get going." Amity waved at him. "Just know that my weakness is but a façade."

"Hacker."

At Sage's word, she nodded before adding, "Of course, sometimes you take a longer time to understand others. It's harder to get things done when your partner forgets his identity. I need him to remember, you know. Actually, not everyone remembers what happened in their lives before Noryuku."

"Uh-huh," Sage said. The boy creased his brows together and thought about it. Was he always a drummer then? What if their identities were linked to the reason they were chosen for Healer Killer? No, if he was right, that partner Amity was referring to was Zayn.

What am I missing now? How did this even... He bit his lips and tapped his feet. I wonder if I'm suicidal since birth.

Sage waited for the girl to leave before rushing over to check on Mei. He opened the cabinet above the sink, his reflection on the cabinet mirror disappearing to reveal bottles and jars.

"312 and a '2' subscript?" The yellow-green gas in the cylindrical, palm-sized glass jar called out to him. "A code. I might need to investigate this." He snatched it off the cabinet and dropped it into his pocket. It fitted perfectly.

"Uh..." A weak voice trailed off. He glanced at the blue-haired girl to find her stretching her arms. "Sage? Where's Amity? And I need water. My mouth is dry again."

"She went on her date." Sage handed her a glass of water and took it after she emptied it.

"Oh." Mei pushed herself off the slippery floor. "Have you checked the phone that's charging? Seems suspicious to me."

Sage pulled her out of the bathroom and took the charging cable out. He pulled the table drawer to find a black cable.

"Isn't this used to transfer files, data and whatnot from a phone to another device?" Mei pointed out. "Amity... why would she have that?"

"A hacker in the guise of an innocent, naïve girl." Sage turned the phone on. "Wouldn't someone as smart as Yuzu know Amity's identity?"

"She's quite the manipulator so Amity might be useful for her. Maybe she wants to hack government websites?"

"No. I think there's a much darker plot here."

"Yeah, someone's trying to sabotage the idol units. You might be targeted soon after they are all wiped out. You make music too."

She's quite the manipulator here. Those words were trapped in Sage's mind. His deduction skills weren't as polished as Zayn's or Mei's, but reading thrillers and watching noirs helped him a little.

"Karma manipulated people with her voice too." Sage walked over to the bookshelf beside the table. A book titled 'Kalosian History' caught his eye. Flipping it open, the letters MWVM were found written diagonally at the top of the preface.

"Amity's handwriting. I think she does more than hacking then."

"If we all had amnesia, there might be a trigger to bring back our memories." Sage threw the phone into the air and grabbed it with a hand. "But what?"

"I took a pic of those letters. They might be an important clue."

Sage nodded and exited the room, the girl strolling behind him. A shriek erupted and both of them looked up.

"That's Ji-min, right?" Mei asked before looking knowingly at the boy.

Running to the stairs, they followed a trail of feathers, white, blue and green, till there weren't any.

"This is..." Sage said while leaning on the door frame for support upon seeing a mangled Chatot.

Mei hiccuped. Jade, Titan, Rain, Ferro, Clay and Ria snapped their heads at the duo who just reached the room.

Ria said with a sigh, "Another two bit the dust. Don't know why but after Iseul answered a phone call, he gouged out Ji-min's eyeballs and broke her neck. Then, he strangled Chatter and, finally, himself."

Sage clenched his fists and wobbled into the room. Someone controlled him to do that. Who? Just who? Who would target us music-makers?

Titan hurried over to him and brought him to sit on the bed. Ria took Mei's hand and led him to beside the bandaged boy.

The jar glided out of Sage's pocket in his diagonal position before his butt reached the bed. Then, the gas spilled into the room.

Jade coughed and shouted, "Get out of there! It's diffusing!"

Sage skipped out of the room with Titan holding onto him, shaking his head, his jaws wide open.

"First, a bomb. Now, this. The heck is wrong with you, Sage?" Ferro growled while rubbing his eyes.

Sage returned his gaze to the four bodies in the room. Goodbye, Dynamite. Goodbye, Placido. Do I bid farewell to Emo-Senpai too?

His eyes widened. Speaking of, where did the three of them go? I haven't seen them all this while. Don't tell me...

"Answer me!" Ferro's words pulled the boy back to reality.

"I found it in Amity's room. Mei can vouch for this." Sage felt a light throbbing pain in his head. He had brought them another episode of misfortune. His mind drifted to the numbers on the bottle. 312 with a '2' subscript. If A=1, B=2, C=3 and so on, then it means CAB? No.

Sweat dropped profusely from his forehead.

Cl2. He tore away from the room as it got out of sight and they were all scurrying down the steps. It's chlorine gas.

"It's okay. Its relative molecular mass is 71. It diffuses slowly," Ferro shouted.

"Darn, you should be glad everyone got away from it as soon as possible and didn't inhale it too." Clay punched the wall the moment they reached the ground floor.

"Sorry. I really didn't mean to—"

"I think it's time we think about why it's only us who're in this sick game," Mei interrupted Sage. "I don't care about that chlorine gas in my room, but can we just calm down first?"

"Your meds! Geodon isn't very cheap, Mei-chan!" Jade gasped and turned her back to them.

"I took it before we left," Mei said while showing her the bottle in her hand.

She felt some distance from everyone suddenly, only watching their lips move. Those thoughts returned to her. As she plummeted onto her knees, she heard people saying they planned to kill her all along.

No! Not now, please.

"Find yourself?" The feminine voice stroke her cheeks.

The convulsing girl screeched as hair like a sapphire curtain entered her vision.

"Beat yourself. Go, go to the river."

"I don't want! I don't want!" Her surroundings grew blurry. "Okay, okay! I beat myself up." Fists pounded her skull again and again. A tear-stained face cracked under the twilight.

She didn't know where she was heading to, but she felt long, wicked green blades cut her flesh, then something fast slid past her with a chilling aura of resentment. Blood-red eyes reflected in the water's surface told her to get on with it.

"Dive in. Don't go out." Sayo brushed Mei's hair and held her hand while inviting her into the cool waters. Mei gripped the pale hand and waddled forward, her breaths jerky with decreasing amplitude. "You have been a bad girl, Mei. Bad girl. Why didn't you save me?"

Silence. Something dragged her back when she struggled to move forward. A turn of her head and she screamed, Sayo vanishing like smoke and all Mei could see was a glint in a dark brown eye. Sage's eye. Somehow, that frightened her. The same eye judged her three years ago and it was back to claim her for his own again.

Her lips moved slowly. "I think I remember now." Her eyes were poisoned daggers. "Sayo died because of me. I am a jinx."